Former President Donald Trump tried to explain why he shared an article featuring a split-screen image of him holding a baseball bat next to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Last week, Trump claimed Bragg was going to indict him over a hush money payment he allegedly made to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels the month before the 2016 election. Bragg is reportedly mulling charges that Trump falsified business records to hide the payment. Trump denies all of this and has not yet been indicted.
On Monday, the former president sat down with Sean Hannity for his first interview on Fox News since September.
“You talked about death and destruction,” Hannity said, referring to another post in which Trump warned what an indictment could bring. “The baseball bat picture next to Alvin Bragg, and you did take that down. And my only question, why open yourself to criticism?”
Trump replied that when he shared the post, he did not see the image accompanying the story:
You have to understand that when the story was put up, I put up a story, we didn’t see pictures. We put up a story that was very exculpatory, very good story from the standpoint of what we’re talking about. And they put up a picture of me. And you know where I was holding the baseball bat? It was at the White House. ‘Make America, buy America’ because I did a lot of ‘Buy America’ things, and this was a company that makes baseball bats. Then they put next to that picture a picture of Alvin Bragg. I didn’t do it, they did it.
Trump went on to criticize a potential prosecution as politically motivated.